


I Fall To Pieces

by flowercrownfemme



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 21-Year-Old Harry Styles, 23-Year-Old Louis Tomlinson, Alternate Universe - Country Singers, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, But You Can Interpret That As You Wish, F/F, Fluff, Girl Direction, Implied Sex in a Corn Field, Kinda, Lots of Old School Country Music, One Shot, Strangers to Lovers, Tacky Lesbian Fashion, blonde Harry, girl harry, girl louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 07:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14327610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowercrownfemme/pseuds/flowercrownfemme
Summary: Louis Tomlinson grew up in a tiny farming town one hundred and seventeen miles away from Nashville, Tennessee. She never dreamed she’d ever make it bigger than the local dive bar on a Saturday night but after one of her songs was picked up for a movie she’s been thrust into fame as a newly-closeted lesbian country singer. She’s content to play along with the narratives constructed for her as long as it’ll get her enough for a plane ticket North and a humble apartment once she’s paid her dues.Everything’s going to plan until she comes face-to-face with America’s Sweetheart, the blonde-haired green-eyed Harry Styles, who’s been winning over the hearts of millions (including Louis’ own) since she was fifteen.☆ ☆ ☆OR the all-girls au where Louis is basically KD Lang and Harry is basically Dolly Parton and they fall in love in a pickup truck.





	I Fall To Pieces

        Louis Tomlinson’s latest tweet has 413 thousand retweets and she’s not even sure which member of her team has written it. Until six months ago she’d been the only one with her twitter password and considered herself the only member of her ‘team.’ But she’s famous now, or so she’s been told, so someone else is being paid to construct scathing tweets about Harry Styles and post them under her name.

        ‘ _@Harry_Styles_ maybe stop playing the victim and pick up a book on song writing, yeah? The new one’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it darlin?’

        674 thousand.

        698.

        She can’t remember what their feud is supposed to be about this time, but Harry Styles has released a new song this past week so they’re taking every possible chance to mention it. She’ll have to scroll back through and find the name - she’s been meaning to give it a listen. She loved the last album Styles put out, and would even admit to liking the ones before it that were more cookie-cutter pop mixed with a few banjo licks than real country, but lately the girl has been delving deeper and is apparently writing more and more of her own songs. Her music has been evolving past bubblegum twang and sounding more like some kind of southern Fleetwood Mac and Louis is excited for the girl’s new album. She would have liked to have told her so but that wouldn’t fit her image.

        She’s _Louis Tomlinson, The Bad Girl of Country_ now while Harry Styles is and will always be _America’s Sweetheart_ , with her big blonde hair and dimples.

        Being The Bad Girl of Country apparently includes twitter fights with just about every other female artist and having to flirt with married men in interviews. She hates it. She’s allowed to smoke though, and they let her flip off one paparazzi a month, so it isn’t too bad. It’s a bit like playing a character, which is fun at times. She always liked acting in school and now it’s like her whole life is a play. She never imagined she’d ever need an image though, not after spending her whole life playing dive bars and hoedowns, but then _Back To You_ happened.

        The movie is terrible. The kind of bad that she would have gone to see just to laugh at but that probably made a fortune at the box office. It’s about a pretty blonde country girl who moved to the big city to follow her dream of designing high end bedazzled cowboy boots and gets called back to the family farm years later when it’s being threatened with foreclosure. Of course there’s a pretty blonde cowboy as the high school sweetheart/ranch-hand and of course they fall right back into blissful heterosexual love and of course out of every song in the world the producers found Louis’ song and decided they needed it for their main theme and title.

        In the blink of an eye she’d been signed to a major label and her first album was being rushed into production. They’d already sent her on a tour of small venues all across the south and Louis had played to audience after audience who sang every word of the song back at her before leaving immediately once it was over. The label keeps telling her to put it at the end of the set but she’d rather just let everyone get it out of their systems than make them sit through fifteen songs they don’t like just to hear the one that they do. Maybe she’ll put together a whole set of only “Back To You” - back-to-back and in a different style every time. She could probably sell out every show, and maybe even finish a set with more than a dozen people in the audience.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

        It’s almost midnight and there’s a whole line of men in suits doing keg stands. Louis was expecting more from Nashville’s most elite song writers and celebrities, though she doesn’t know why she was. The Country Music Awards ended hours ago and now everybody’s running through some RnB singer’s mansion while horrible club remixes of all the popular country songs from the past year pulse around them loud enough to make the surely priceless art pieces on the walls rattle. It’s too hot and too crowded and Louis can’t see a single person she knows, or even recognizes. She lost Liam, her best friend since childhood and her date to the award show, hours ago when she spotted Kacey Musgraves and went running off to try and talk to her. Liam’s always claimed to be straight as an arrow but sometimes Louis wonders about her.

        The CMAs went about her she’d expected. They made her wear a dress that she hated but they at least let her wear boots with it. She didn’t win the award for Best Song In A Film, but she would have been very surprised if she had. She’d gotten to sit back with Liam and eat all she wanted and laugh at everything around them. It was fun, even if she felt a bit out of place and even if Liam teased her for fifteen minutes when Harry Styles went up to accept some award for a single she’d released. She couldn’t help it that she’d had a tiny little crush on Harry Styles back when her first album was released - one that resulted in Louis watching the girl’s first music video over and over again for weeks. She was cute, in that sweet big-eyed Bambi kind of way, and seventeen-year-old-Louis had still been solidifying herself in her sexuality so it was a very defining moment for her.

        But she was still going to punch Liam if she called Harry Styles her future wife again.

        Which she did.

        Three more times.

Louis’ sure that if anyone got a picture of them laughing during Harry’s speech they’ll spin it into some story about her making fun of her nemesis, just like they always do. Maybe she should find Styles at the party and beat her up or something - if she did it in front of enough cameras she could probably become the new darling of the label. Maybe she could work out five years of pent up sexual frustration. Or maybe she’d just have a smoke.

        She’d have liked to have had a drink but she had a long drive home and she’d promised Liam and her parents that she wouldn’t even have a beer. Liam offered to let her stay with her in the city but Louis had been there too long already and she wanted to go home for a bit, even if that meant driving for an hour or two in the middle of the night.

        She’s looking longingly at the table of booze when she realizes why the current remix they’re playing sounds familiar. She groans when she hears her own voice booming out of the speakers, the same words she’s had to sing nonstop for six months, distorted and now bass-heavy with some kind of godawful dubstep beat that’s sure to give her a headache. She pushes past stumbling sweaty bodies, all chanting her own words without even glancing her way as she reaches desperately for the back door, one hand already pulling a pack of cigs from her pocket. The passes a blonde girl kissing a dark-haired girl and she briefly wonders if they’re kissing for real and if she might not be the only not-straight person at the party. Someone wolf-whistles and she keeps moving. By the time she bursts out into the night she feels sticky with other people’s sweat and her chest is heaving at a break from the thick humid air. She pushes her bangs off of her forehead, leaning back against the house and trying to block out the muffled noise from inside.

        She hasn’t even lit her first cigarette when a voice sounds from just beside her.

        “You’re Louis Tomlinson!”

        When she turns her head she sees wide green eyes and a big cloud of familiar blonde hair.

        “Yeah,” she says. “You’re Harry Styles.”

        The girl nods, lifting her chin and grinning proudly.

        Louis wonders if her dimples are really insured or if that’s just a rumor.

        “I really love your song,” Harry tells her, eyes big and earnest, and Louis prepares herself to give the usual _Thanks! So glad you liked ‘Back To You,’ the album will be out on the 28th! Would you like a picture?_ but Harry continues, “I’ve been listenin’ to ‘Miss You’ bout non-stop since it came out. It always reminds me of Hank Williams, was that on purpose?”

        Louis doesn’t know what to say.

        “Um, yeah,” she says, frowning. “My friend Steve, who produced all my songs? I told him I wanted that one to sound like if Hank Williams and Oasis collaborated and he somehow just knew exactly what I meant? I wasn’t sure if it would actually translate but I think he did a good job on it. Like I’d hoped at least part a’ that came through.”

        “No but I _get_ that!” Harry nodded, her curls bouncing wildly. “The Hank Williams/Oasis thing. You can totally hear it in the song! Like you’ve got that twangy old school guitar but then the drums are hard enough that they keep the guitar from draggin’ along too much and then your voice just cuts through it all so perfectly! It’s got that _thing_ , you know, like it could almost be rockabilly but it’s not? Do you know what I mean? Of course you know what I mean, you _made_ it, but I dunno. When everything all comes together… It’s like a _dream._ ”

        “I- Thank you,” Louis tells her. She’s gotten used to people asking her about her shoes more than her songs, and only telling her what she’s done wrong when they do bring up her music. She’s definitely not used to _this_. This excitement and life and understanding. “Your last album, it was beautiful. I loved ‘Sweet Creature,’ it was like somethin’ my gramma woulda sung to me when I was a kid. Felt like some kind of lullaby.”

        “Well gee,” Harry shrugs, her cheeks pinking prettily. “I’m glad you think so.”

        “Who played the banjo on it?” Louis asks. “I’ve been tryin’a find a good player but I haven’t found the right fit yet.”

        “Oh!” Harry smiles sheepishly, her cheeks getting darker. “That was me.”

        “Really?” Louis grins. “How’d you get it to sound so soft? Everyone I bring in wants to play like they’re in the fuckin’ Country Bear Jamboree but you made it sound the a music box or somethin’.”

        “I dunno,” Harry laughs. “That’s just how I play.”

        “Well it’s real pretty,” Louis smiles.

        “If you ever need a session player for your banjo…” Harry trails off expectantly.

        “God, can you imagine the response?” Louis laughs. “Months of supposed hatred and suddenly you’re my new banjo player! I think their heads would explode.”

        “I could use a fake name,” Harry giggles. “List me on the back as Dusty Cox or somethin’.”

        “ _Dusty Cocks?_ ” Louis practically howls, doubling over. “What kind of a name is ‘Dusty Cocks’? Are you the oldest livin’ porn star?”

        “Hey!” Harry says, trying to look offended even though she was laughing just as hard. “It’s a great name! It’s the one I use at hotels and things. My cat’s name is Dusty and my stepdad’s name was Cox. And that’s _Cox_ , with an ‘X’.”

        “Well, if your music career ever tanks at least you’ve got some options. You could either join my backing band on banjo or put your wonderful porn star name to use.”

        “I’ll keep that in mind,” she grins, her lips shiny and red.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

        The next time Louis sees Harry Styles is only an hour or two later but the girl’s smile is gone, replaced with a full on pout.

        “Who so glum, Curly?” she asks, squeezing her way onto a small love-seat beside her. 

        “Hey Lou,” Harry sighs, slumping against her so easily it makes Louis’ heart stutter.

        “Hey,” Louis smiles softly, reaching up to poke where Harry’s dimple should have been. “That wasn’t an answer. What’s got you so down? Do you need me to fight anyone for you? I’m the bad girl of country, didn’t you hear?”

        Harry cracks a smile and Louis feels a surge of pride.

        “You don’t gotta fight anyone,” she concedes. “ ’s just Niall and Zayn. I was s’posed to stay at Niall’s tonight but I just saw them goin’ up to Zayn’s room and Niall always passes out after she orgasms and there’s no way she’s not about to orgasm if she hasn’t already - have you met Zayn yet? She gives girls orgasms without even touchin’ them, I swear - so I’ll probably be stuck here for the night and all the other rooms are taken so I guess I’ll be sleeping right here once everyone else clears out.”

        She pats the love-seat sadly and Louis’ heart positively breaks.

        “I’d offer to bring you back with me for the night -” Louis starts, but Harry cuts her off with an eager look.

        “You would?”

        “I mean, yeah, of course I would,” Louis says, “but I’m driving back home tonight, and it’s about a hundred miles from here.”

        “That’s okay, I can have a car pick me up in the mornin’,” Harry offers. “Unless it would be an inconvenience.”

        “No, not at all,” Louis tells her, silently wondering what the hell she’d doing. “But wouldn’t you rather -”

        “When were you planning on leavin’?”

        Louis wants to tell her she’d probably prefer finding a hotel room, or just staying there with her friends, because Louis’ house is far away in the middle of nowhere and it’s probably a mess and she still lives with her parents who are probably waiting up to hear which celebrities she saw at the party. But she’s weak, and Harry’s eyes are too green and too earnest to say no to.

        “Whenever you’re ready,” she shrugs. 

        Before she knows it she’s out in her beat up old truck with none other than Harry Styles sitting on the passenger side, her hair nearly touching the ceiling as she flips through the tapes in the glove compartment. Louis doesn’t think her parents are going to believe her even when she brings Harry to the door.

        “Is there really only a tape player in here?” Harry asks, as if it’s a miracle. It probably is, Louis thinks, wondering about the last time a truck this old even drove through a neighborhood this rich. She’d tried explaining to Harry how far the drive was on the way to the car but Harry waved off her concerns.

        “Yeah,” Louis nods, grabbing the stick shift and putting the truck in gear as she pulls away from the house. “It was my grandpa’s, back when my mom was a kid.”

        “You could probably have a new stereo installed,” Harry hums, shifting through Little Big Town and Johnny Cash and KD Lang tapes, pulling each one out to read the back. Louis sends up a silent prayer that she doesn’t get in an accident on the way home and kill America’s Sweetheart. The seatbelts in the truck don’t even have torso straps. “That movie should be makin’ you some decent money. At least enough for a few upgrades.”

        “It is,” Louis shrugs. “I already replaced the engine in this guy and fixed up the old barn at home, but I’m savin’ the rest.”

        “Oh?” Harry asks, fitting Nancy Sinatra’s _How Does That Grab You?_ into the cassette deck. “What are you savin’ up for? You gotta plan?”

        “Maybe,” Louis tells her, flicking on her turn signal as she pulls onto the highway. “Half a plan. The first part of a plan, at least.”

        “That’s more than I’ve got,” Harry smiles easily, crunching on potato chips from the bag Louis keeps under the seat. Louis didn’t even hear her pull them out and she doesn’t know how Harry knew they were there. She wonders briefly if Harry Styles is a witch. “So what are you gonna do? Invest in gold? Buy a new tractor? A solid _gold_ tractor?”

        “Why would I ever need a solid gold tractor?” Louis asks, reaching over and stealing a handful of chips.

        “Just for the drama of it all,” Harry says, dimpling. She’s got crumbs all around her mouth and her lipstick is smudged down to her chin. Louis wishes she wasn’t so endeared by everything Harry did. “I wish _I_ had a solid gold tractor.”

        “I’d lend you mine but I’ve got no intentions of owning one. I’m goin’ north.”

        “Like Louisville-north or north-north?”

        “North-north,” Louis tells her, mouth set determinedly. “I don’t know where yet. Maybe New York or San Francisco. Somewhere far above the Bible Belt.”

 _Somewhere I can kiss girls_ , she wants to add, but she’s not sure if her lesbianism is enough of an open secret that Harry would know. She thinks it’s quite obvious, but she’s always been surprised by how much people are willing to ignore if they aren’t expecting it.

        “I’ve always loved San Francisco,” Harry tells her wistfully, and Louis wonders if that’s some kind of a code - if it means _I’ve always loved girls_ , or _I’ve always been a supporter of lesbian country singers like yourself_ or if she’s just projecting onto a straight girl. Harry doesn’t _feel_ straight though, even if there’s no evidence to support it. There’s something about her clothes, how even though they’re always neat and fitted they’re never perfectly in style but she still pulls it all off better than anyone else could ever hope to. She’s always clashing prints or wearing too much fringe or too big a crinoline but she always looks so _good_ it’s maddening. Plus she’s got these cowboy boots that are cut down to the ankles and she always seems like she’s sharing some kind of inside joke when she wears them. There’s also the way she keeps looking at Louis, eyes big and trusting and almost in awe sometimes, but most of all it’s just her way of _existing_ that feels familiar and very much _lesbian_ to Louis.

        “Me too.”

        “So how’d you end up here?” Harry asks, turning so her back’s against the door and pulling one knee up to her chest, watching Louis drive. “I always like hearin’ everyone’s story.”

        “I don’t think I’ve really got much of a story,” Louis shrugs. “If I do it’s real boring. I think it’s the exact same story every out-of-nowhere musician has to tell in every single interview they give for their entire life. I grew up right in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere and I put some shitty demos online and some movie producer found them and decided they needed ‘Back To You’ for their shitty movie and here I am.”

        “Well how’d you start singing?” Harry asks, resting her chin on top of her knee.

        “I dunno,” Louis frowns, trying to remember. “I think I just always was. Every time there was a talent show at school or anything I’d always be there singin’ and then my mom bought me my first guitar when I was around ten and I don’t think I put it down for about three years. It felt like everythin’ just fit into place once I had it, you know?”

        “Yeah,” Harry nods.

        “And you?” Louis asked. “How’d you become _Harry Styles_ : America’s Sweetheart?”

        “Oh, I used to do pageants.”

        Louis looks at her incredulously. She knows she’s not the world’s leading Harry Styles expert but she can’t remember ever reading about pageants.

        “Yeah,” Harry continues, “I started when I was three and kept goin’ until I was fourteen. I know you always hear about those pageant moms who cart their kids all over and force ‘em on stage even when they’re screamin’ and cryin’ but it was never like that for me. My mom always made it clear that we’d stop any time I wanted, and my older sister actually did ‘em for a few years before she got bored of it and quit. But I just _liked_ it. I’d always been a ham at family parties and things and it was so fun to get a whole stage to myself and to get to dress up in these big sparkly dresses and have my hair all teased up and to have everyone telling me how cute I was. I’ve probably got all kinds of vanity issues now,” she laughs.

        “Did you do singing for your talent or somethin’?”

        “Not at first,” Harry explains. “I used to have this act where I’d ride out on a miniature horse and do this little dressage routine while I spun a baton, but I got too big for the mini and we were havin’ trouble figurin’ out how to get a full-size horse on stage.”

        “ _Bull_ _shit_ ,” Louis says, her jaw loose.

        “Nope,” Harry tells her, holding one hand up and x-ing over her chest with the other. “Cross my heart. I’ve probably got pictures somewhere I could show you. Anyway, since we couldn’t do the horse thing anymore we had to figure somethin’ else out and we figured out I could sing. There was some talent scout at one pageant I did and the rest is history. Put out an album at fifteen, started tourin’ stadiums by sixteen, sang the national anthem at the Superbowl when I was seventeen. On and on ‘till here I am; Twenty-one years old and sittin’ right here next to you.”

        “It’s like a fairy tale,” Louis laughs, “tiny horse and all.”

        “Always felt like it,” Harry nods. “I remember the first time I played at Dollywood it was like ‘ _That’s it. I’ve got everythin’ I could ever want. It’s all downhill from here._ ’”

        “You got to play _Dollywood?_ ” Louis asked excitedly, turning towards Harry as much as she could without going off the road.

        “Yeah!” Harry leans forward, her usual drawling speech speeding up to an almost normal sounding pace. “When I was sixteen! I’ve met Dolly a few times since but that first time it was like ‘ _Holy shit! That’s_ Her _!_ ’ I started cryin’ and everything but she was so sweet about it all.”

        “She’s really as nice as she seems?”

        “Nicer.”

        “And her boobs, are they really that big?”

        “Bigger.”

        Louis shoots her a scathing look of disbelief.

        “No way.”

        “They are!” Harry insists. “No two-dimensional image could ever do them justice. I almost hyperventilated when she hugged me the first time, it was a highly spiritual experience. They’re like…”

        She holds out her hands in front of her, as if she were holding a pair of invisible basketballs.

        “They’re huge.”

        “Damn,” Louis says wistfully, lost in thought. She doesn’t even notice Harry switching the tape in the cassette deck until the familiar beat starts up and she looks over to see Harry grinning. She’s bopping her head back and forth and giggling and she must have cranked open the window because her pristine blonde hair is blowing all over the cab. Louis wants to kiss her.

        She sings instead.

        “ _Baby when I met you there was peace unknown. I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb_ ,” Louis sings along in her best Kenny Rogers impression, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. “ _I was soft inside, there was somethin’ going on_ …”

        Harry comes in on Dolly Parton’s parts, her head tilted back and her face serious, as though it were a real performance. She looks over at Louis between each line though, and her whole face lights up.

        “ _Tender love is blind, it requires a dedication. All this love we feel needs no conversation - we ride it together, ah ah! Makin’ love with each other, ah ah!_ ” 

        They throw their arms around as they sing, each trying to outdo the other in dramatics. Louis nearly crashes the car when Harry decides to pantomime on ‘making love,’ throwing out a few exaggerated moans before falling back against the seat in a fit of giggles. Louis thinks she’s going to die someday with those four seconds replaying in her head.

        “ _Islands in the stream!_ ” they shout together, their voices swirling together in the cool night air that pours in from both windows. “ _That is what we are! No one in between! How can we be wrong? Sail away with me! To another world!_ ”

        Like that they cycle through Louis’ favorite cassettes; Harry curling her lip along with Elvis and Louis dipping her voice exaggeratedly with Hank Williams. Harry lets out an honest to god shriek when she finds a Shania Twain tape at the bottom of the pile and plays ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman’ twice in a row. Louis can’t remember the last time she laughed so much all at once. It makes her whole chest feel like a balloon that’s finally been filled with air. She feels big and light and happy and she wishes she lived on the other side of the world so they could just keep driving forever. But they’ve only got about four miles of road left before they’ll be back at the farm and her parents will be interrogating her and fawning over Harry and Harry won’t be _hers_ anymore.

        She doesn’t think before she’s pulling off on a tiny but familiar dirt road, ignoring Harry’s questioning look, and driving until they’re on top of a small hill, looking out over a patchwork of fields. She cuts the engine but leaves Patsy Cline - Harry’s most recent selection - crooning from the stereo. She’s staring at the dashboard, trying to decide what to say even though her mind is completely blank, so lost in her head that she jumps when the passenger door closes with a loud _crack_. She turns in her seat, watching Harry’s silhouette through the window as she walks back to the bed of the truck. Louis can feel the truck shake and settle as Harry hoists herself up with a foot on the back wheel and throws a leg over the side, setting herself down right in the back where Louis knows it’s full of dust and dirt and old damp hay. Harry lifts her hand and taps on the back window beside Louis’ head impatiently and Louis unbuckles her seatbelt. She slides open a panel on the window before she leaves the cab, turning up the volume of the music so it’ll still be audible if they listen for it.

        When she pulls herself into the bed she sees Harry stretched out on her back, one arm tucked back under her head and the other resting against her stomach, singing along to the music under her breath. There’s only the moon to give them light but it’s all they need. Louis lowers herself down beside her and she can feel the other girl’s heat radiating against her side. She’s beautiful, like well and truly beautiful, like a painting or something. Louis thinks she should be off starting wars with her beauty, like Helen of Troy - or at least playing Helen of Troy in a movie or something - not playing for crowds of boring racist straight people inside stadiums surrounded by pickup trucks. They don’t deserve her. _Louis_ doesn’t deserve her, but she thinks she’d try her very hardest to be the kind of person who does.

        “They won’t let me release the last song I wrote,” Harry says, more to the sky than to Louis, her eyes fixed on the blanket of stars above them, but Louis knows she’s meant to hear.

        “Why not?” she asks, because she knows Harry wants to her ask.

        “Because it’s not about a boy.”

        Louis thinks she should be surprised but it feels almost like they’re reading from a script, like she knows what Harry’s going to say before she says it.

        “Yeah?”

        “It’s called ‘Woman’ but they want me to change the title. I either have to change some words and turn it into another ‘Jolene’ story, like I’m _jealous_ of her or somethin’, or I have to change the pronouns. Or they won’t even let me record it. They’re tryin’a get me to sell it off to some guy to sing but it’s _mine_. I don’t wanna release it if I have to change it, that’d _ruin_ it, but I just wanna play it so _bad_ sometimes I don’t care that they’d probably drop me from the label or, I dunno, even _sue_ me or somethin’. I just wanna stop pretending all the time.”

        “They might let me be bi soon,” Louis tells her casually, as though she has this conversation all the time. As if they’re just talking about the weather. “There was a meetin’ about it last week. They think it would show they’re progressive and get some press but they’d probably give me a fake boyfriend so it’s not too threatening. Can’t alienate the audience, you know? It’s still a lie though, and they suggested it like some brilliant compromise.”

        “Better than nothin’,” Harry says, turning onto her side so that they’re almost nose to nose.

        “Yeah,” Louis nods, and she can feel Harry’s breath on her lips.

        “You can kiss me,” Harry tell her, so quick Louis’ not sure she meant to say it out loud. “If you want to, I mean. Like, if you don’t that’s okay. But. If you do. You can.”

        “I do,” Louis says, and she just barely sees Harry’s grin before it’s pressed against her own. She can feel the slick waxy lipstick on Harry’s lips and she knows it’s smearing all over both of their mouths but she doesn’t mind and she’s guessing from how hard Harry’s kissing her that she doesn’t mind either. She wraps her arms around Harry’s waist, pulling her close until there’s no more room between them, and Harry’s got her fingers tangled in Louis’ hair, the calluses on her fingertips catching on the strands as she holds her in place. They kiss until they’re out of breath and then they kiss just a little bit more, until they’re both light headed and giggling, their foreheads pressed together.

        Louis wants to stay there forever, where she can feel Harry’s heart beating against her own and she can smell her Aqua Net hairspray mixing with floral perfume and sweat. She wants to lay there until the sun comes up and the truck gets surrounded by a sea of cows grazing around them. She wants the farmer to come chase them away and she wants to come back the next night and do it all again. She wants to take Harry home and introduce her to her favorite horse and to the pair of sheep she raised from babies and she wants to watch Harry bottle-feed the kids their goats would give birth to in the Spring. She wants to wake up every morning in a tiny apartment in some big city with rain pattering against the windows and a beautiful green eyed girl in her arms.

        She wants a lot of things.

        “You know how I told you I was stranded at Zayn’s?” Harry asks, sounding guilty.

        “Yes?” Louis tilts her head up to bite Harry’s nose lightly, making her grin.

        “I might have exaggerated a little bit,” Harry admits. “They’ve got an extra room but it’s right next to theirs and they’re always so _loud_ and even after they fall asleep they always wake up again at three a.m. for another round and I really wanted to talk to you more and I thought it might be my only chance so I lied a little.”

        “Asshole,” Louis says fondly, reaching out and tugging on one of Harry’s curls. “Just invitin’ yourself to my house and makin’ me feel bad for you so I’d say yes? I think I might love you.”

        “Shut up,” Harry laughs, slapping her hand away. “I just didn’t want our relationship to start out on a foundation of lies.”

        “Our relationship, huh?” Louis asks, finding another curl to pull on, watching it spring back into place with a grin. “Didn’t know we had one of those.”

        “Not if you don’t stop pullin’ my hair,” Harry tells her, wrapping one hand around Louis’ wrist as if to pull her away but making no move to stop her.

        “How do you get it so damn big anyway?” Louis asks, mesmerized by the cloud of blonde hair, one curl wrapped neatly around her finger.

        “Oh, most of it’s not mine,” Harry shrugs. She reaches up and, after only a moment of concentration and a few winces, pulls out a whole line of hair extensions while Louis looks on in horror. “And they bleach it so much it sticks up pretty easy. I’m a natural brunette.”

        “Holy _shit_ ,” she mutters, staring at the bundle hair in Harry’s hand as if it’ll jump out at her any second. “You wear those all the time?”

        “Yeah, they’ve never put any on you?” Harry asks, waving it around casually.

        “No,” Louis shakes her head. “Thank god.”

        “You wanna try?” Harry asks, holding it out. “Your hair’s pretty short but I bet I could clip ‘em in okay.”

        “No!” Louis shrieks with laughter, jumping up and huddling against the side of the truck. “Get that thing away from me!”

        “C’mon, Lou,” Harry giggles, cornering her and waving the hair around threateningly.

        Louis screams, hopping out onto the grass and running away while Harry chases her. When she finally catches up between a few rows of corn they tumble to the ground together and forget all about the hair extensions.

        When they finally make it back to Louis’ farm the sun is coming up and they’re both looking worse for wear but when Louis tucks Harry into her own bed and pulls the old handmade quilt up to her neck (before pulling it right back down, the kissability of Harry’s neck having been brought to her attention) she feels the same way that she did when she held a guitar for the first time: Like everything’s fallen into place.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

 

        One year later Louis is sat right back in the audience of the Country Music Awards, watching the love of her life on stage. Harry’s wearing a sparkling purple jumpsuit and Louis can’t wait to tease her about it when they get home, even though she looks amazing. This time Louis’ got her hair up in a pompadour, with a bolo tie around her neck, and she thinks they make a very nice couple. She always feels proud when she watches Harry perform but she’s never felt such a huge surge of love through her whole body as she does now, watching her girl sing the song she’s wanted to play for years.  There’s a glittering guitar strapped across her chest and she’s singing with such emotion that Louis knows her eyes are wet. If she looks hard at the side of stage she can see a man in a suit yelling angrily into a headset but that’s all for later, after she’s kissed her girl and thoroughly congratulated her, made sure she knows just how proud Louis is. Maybe she’ll wait until they’re away from all the cameras and prying eyes. Maybe she won’t.

        “ _I hope you can see, the shape that I’m in…_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this!! Sorry if you're from the South and everything about this is completely inaccurate and wrong! I've never really been outside of California but I've got a few friends who have lived in small towns in the South and my grandma grew up in New Mexico which isn't really Southern but she thinks she's a cowgirl so I based everything around what I've heard from them and read in books so hopefully it's not completely awful!  
> I made an 8tracks playlist with some of the songs/artists mentioned and some that I listened to while writing this and that's here if anyone wants to listen to it:  
> https://8tracks.com/reelaroundthefountain/i-fall-to-pieces  
> And the moodboard on my tumblr:  
> http://flower-crown-femme.tumblr.com/post/172979397167/flower-crown-femme-i-fall-to-pieces-louis  
> Thanks <3 <3 <3  
> 


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